Fujitsu Launches Latest Lineup of PRIMEQUEST Mission-Critical Servers in Hong Kong

Fujitsu announced that new PRIMEQUEST model, PRIMEQUEST 1800E, the latest in its lineup of mission-critical x86 servers, will be available in Hong Kong starting today.

PRIMEQUEST 1800E servers are equipped with the latest 8-core Intel® Xeon® processor 7500 series, maintaining the same standards of reliability and availability as previous series (*1), while greatly improving price/performance. In addition, by decreasing the physical size of the server - a reduction of rack space by 1/3 and weight by 1/5 - Fujitsu has succeeded in cutting the series’ maximum power consumption by approximately 1/3. The PRIMEQUEST 1800E is being offered as a “Fujitsu Super Green” product, distinguishing it as a leading environmentally friendly product based on the Fujitsu Group's green assessment guidelines.

"The financial services industry has been and will continue to be one of the leading vertical markets in our server revenue for the Hong Kong market, where many financial institutions continue to invest in their open-source servers for their mission-critical business systems to gain competitive advantages through their IT infrastructure upgrades. Fujitsu Hong Kong has been working closely with mid to large enterprises to help realize their opportunities to move to mission-critical computing, which is a cornerstone for future growth," said James Pang, General Manager, Sales Department of Information System & Services Division, Fujitsu Hong Kong Limited.

"We will continue to drive growth by strengthening our core business with new products and technologies that speed up implementation times and are of high reliability, availability, performance scalability and cost-efficiency. We are thus confident that the global alliances with Intel®, Linux® and Microsoft® coupled with our significantly expanded mission-critical server portfolio including PRIMEQUEST 1800E, we are well positioned to effectively meet individual customer needs, especially for the finance and banking sectors in Hong Kong," said Pang.

Equipped with an Intel processor and Linux® and Microsoft® Windows Server® operating systems, PRIMEQUEST, which combines Fujitsu’s proprietary technologies for high reliability and availability, is the perfect open-system server for use in upgrading mission-critical business systems, large-scale database systems, or as an ERP solution platform. Furthermore, because of its compatibility with leading virtualization software, PRIMEQUEST exhibits strength as a trusted enterprise cloud computing platform, as well as in server consolidation and integration, which are effective in reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of ICT systems.

"Intel welcomes Fujitsu's next generation PRIMERGY and PRIMEQUEST platforms built on the Intel® Xeon® processor 7500 series," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Center Group. "Fujitsu's high-end enterprise market reputation and expertise, coupled with the scalable performance and advanced reliability capabilities of the Intel Xeon processor 7500 series, will help allow IT managers to run their most demanding, scale-up workloads."

Background

In recent years, an increasing number of companies have employed open systems for their mission-critical business system needs, with the aim of shedding their dependence on vendors, optimizing their investments, and managing the latest technologies.

In response to this demand, Fujitsu began offering the PRIMEQUEST series in 2005 as an open-system, mission-critical server that combines industry-standard open architecture with technologies for high reliability and availability that Fujitsu has cultivated from developing mainframe servers.

Compared to previous models, the newly announced PRIMEQUEST 1800E features a significantly enhanced price/performance ratio, superior green technology, and virtual machine compatibility. Consequently, the series can better assist companies in optimizing their ICT infrastructure, helping them to improve reliability, strengthen business growth and continuity, and quickly respond to climate change.

Features of PRIMEQUEST 1800E

1. Reliability and Availability
   
   • Hardware Redundancy: A redundant configuration of internal components, including power supply units and cooling fans, in addition to memory mirroring, helps support the continuous operation of users’ business services.
   • "Flexible" I/O Functionality: "The Flexible I/O" functionality allows users to freely combine numerous system boards mounted with CPUs and memory chips with various I/O units, which are equipped with PCI cards and external interfaces, to create a partitioned system structure. In the event that a system board fails during operation, the affected partition will automatically reboot and swap to a backup system board, helping companies to quickly restore their business services.
2. Performance and Scalability
   
   • High-performance CPUs and Abundant Memory: Each partition can accommodate eight (64-core) high-performance CPUs, as well as 1 TB of memory, providing ample processing power for handling massive applications, such as large-scale corporate database systems.
     
     On the two-tier SAP® Sales and Distribution (SD) standard application benchmark, the PRIMEQUEST 1800E has achieved the world-record result (*2) of 16,000 SAP SD benchmark users on Windows (results as of March 31, 2010). This result demonstrates both the top performance of PRIMEQUEST 1800E on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark, as well as its business applicability. The two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark is the industry standard for measuring application performance, given its visibility and high number of published results across the range of server architectures. Its main characteristic and differentiator from other benchmarks is its ability to run business processes (i.e., sell from stock of the SAP ERP application) instead of synthetic benchmark code.
3. Open-System Configuration and Flexibility
   
   • Open-System CPUs and Operating Systems: PRIMEQUEST employs industry standard open-system CPUs and operating systems, making it compatible with a diversity of products offered by software and hardware vendors around the world, including Fujitsu’s time-tested middleware products, such as Interstage, Systemwalker and PRIMECLUSTER, as well as storage systems and packages for various industries and businesses. These capabilities enable customers to build state-of-the-art open-system configurations.
   • Server Virtualization: As the result of hardware partitioning functions that successfully enable error isolation, as well as Hyper-V™, VMware®, and other popular software’s virtual machine functions, which enable finely tuned and flexible allocation of CPU and memory resources, customers are able to leverage the superior processing power of the PRIMEQUEST 1800E efficiently, regardless of the reliability and scale of individual operational units, thereby enabling the optimization of ICT infrastructure and the creation of enterprise cloud computing environments.
   • Integrated Optimization Software: By employing ServerView Resource Coordinator VE, Fujitsu’s server automation and visualization software, customers can control, supervise and operate server environments, including physical and virtual machines, from a single console screen.
4. Eco-Friendly ICT
   
   • Decreased Power Consumption: PRIMEQUEST 1800E boasts a small footprint compared to previous series, having decreased in rack space by 1/3 and weight by 1/5. It features both an 80 PLUS GOLD (*3) certified energy efficient power supply and improvements in cooling efficiency, enabling a 1/3 reduction in maximum power consumption.
   • Visualization of Power Consumption: A server management unit (MMB: Management Board) comes standard, allowing users to visualize the status of the server's power supply unit. In addition, the attached ServerView Operations Manager software assists users in making the server’s power consumption visible.
   • Completely Lead Free: All solder used in mounting electrical components to the server's printed circuit boards, such as the system board, is lead free. The series is compliant with the EU’s RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directive, and other environmental protection laws and regulations around the world.

The PRIMEQUEST 1800E is being offered as a “Fujitsu Super Green” product, distinguishing it as a leading environmentally friendly product based on the Fujitsu Group’s green assessment guidelines.

Glossary and Notes

1. Previous Series: PRIMEQUEST 500A series. All comparisons of price and performance, rack space, weight, and maximum power consumption are based on an identically configured PRIMEQUEST 580A server and the PRIMEQUEST 1800E server.

2. World-record Result: The SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) standard application benchmark performed on March 8, 2010 by Fujitsu in Walldorf, Germany, has been certified with the following data: 16,000 SAP SD benchmark users, Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition, SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, and the SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0. The server was configured as follows: Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST 1800E, 8 processors / 64 cores / 128 threads, Intel Xeon Processor X7560, 2.26 GHz, 64 KB L1 cache and 256 KB L2 cache per core, 24 MB L3 cache per processor, 512 GB main memory. For more information about this benchmark, please visit www.sap.com/benchmark. The SAP certification number was not available at press time and can also be found at www.sap.com/benchmark.

3. 80 PLUS GOLD: 80 PLUS (http://www.80plus.org) is a program to promote the reduction of electronic devices’ power consumption. It certifies products whose power supplies maintain over 80% energy efficiency at 20-100% load. Based on their efficiency performance, products are rated "80 PLUS BRONZE", "80 PLUS SILVER", or "80 PLUS GOLD".